Swami Chetanananda teaches that it is wrong to break connections with the guru. He ridicules, denounces and threatens students who leave him and speak openly about their experiences with him. Even so, more than seventy members of the Institute severed their connections to Swami Chetanananda between 1994 and 2000. This constitutes nearly half of the average active membership of the group.

Swami Chetanananda, (no relation to the great Swami Chetanananda of the St. Louis Vedanta Society,) is one of the three stooges gurus triumvirate, along with Swami Shankarananda in Australia and the Virginia "blessed Mary" flimflammer "Master" Charles Cannon. This alone is enough to send up the caution flag, if the fact that Chetanananda came certified by that circus known as SYDA yoga isn't enough to scare you off.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

India's Former PM In The Closet With Sai Baba

Vajpayee, who is on a two-day visit to Karnataka for campaigning, was closeted with Sai Baba for nearly an hour in the company of his foster daughter Namita Bhattacharya, son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya and granddaughter Niharika.

Even we don't wanna go there with that one.

Bottom line: sucking up to Sai Baba and other big-time gurus equals votes for Indian politicos. Since elections have been called for February, we can expect more of this sort of thing:

This is the second time Vajpayee has met Saibaba after the general election was announced [for] February 29. The first meeting last month was at the spiritual leader's ashram at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Cosmic Connie Kicks Her Some Kracki Ass

File under: Gurubusting and Satscams

She's the whipping mistress of the New-Wage, a ravishing brunette with a mind of steel wielding a sure and sharp pen. She's presently slicing and dicing the Kracki over at her Whirling Musings blog, where she breaks it down in a way that has us whipped too:

Love ’em or hate ’em, it seems clear that Kalki and Amma and the crew at Oneness U have some grandiose plans for humanity. One big goal is to effect a critical mass of enlightenment in the human race by the year 2012. 2012, in case you aren’t aware, is the new Y2K. That’s the year when the world may or may not end, depending upon which nutty web site you land on. According to the Oneness U folks, however, if their critical-mass plan works, 2012 will see the birth of a new Golden Age of Humanity, which will spread all over the world.

The web site of Oneness U affiliate The Oneness Centre Australia ’splains in simple scientific terms how the critical-mass project works:

The divine plan is that when 64,000 people, spread all over the globe, have reached the oneness state, the effect will spontaneously spread to the rest of humanity. This will occur through what is known as the morphogenic fields**, by the action of the ‘100th monkey syndrome’. It is, as Malcolm Gladwell says in The Tipping Point, a "positive" epidemic. The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly and this can lead to permanent change of a massive nature.

While there are probably enough New-Wage concepts in that one paragraph to make the average skeptic’s head explode, the one thing that stuck out for me was that tired old hundredth-monkey banner, which, though loosely based on a real incident, is mostly b.s. in the context in which New-Wagers employ it. But Oneness U has apparently dragged it out again in order to push their critical-mass enlightenment agenda. (I suppose one could call the hundredth-monkey story in this context a "turban legend," but the Oneness U folks don’t normally sport that particular type of headgear.)

Make no mistake: Kalki Bhagavan is the biggest scamming con man guru presently in operation on the planet. Everything about the Oneness Movement is bullshit. It's a gross, vicious, greedy and ruthless perversion of Vedanta. They rape the highest truths of the Upanishads and make them slaves in their avaricious and pernicious orgy of psychotic grandiosity. And every one of their devotees gets it in the ass (through their wallet) as their heads are drummed dumb with nonsense about 2012 and the Kracki's eventual coming to be recognized as THE ONE, as opposed to all those thousands of otherTHE ONEs roaming the world expecting the same recognition some day.

PS: Don't forget to check out Connie's kicking her some Maharishi ass, too.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Stuart + Greg = Better Than Just Goode

Another in the Gp heroes column is reader/contributor Stuart Resnick. His riff on Greg Goode's book excerpt brings yet another shaft of clarity to bear on the whole nondual "problem":

Thanks for providing this taste of Greg's teaching. It speaks to what I've felt in response to various satsang groups, as well as to some books like McKenna's Spiritual Enlightenmet: The Damnedest Thing.

That is: doesn't the idea of "non-duality" suggest that we can deeply question any type of opposities or distinctions we believe in and cling to? And in fact, the popularity of some satsang teachers, and of McKenna, seems connected to their ability to skillfully and elegantly call into question dualities like Good vs Evil or Spiritual vs Mundane or Self vs World.

And yet sometimes there are other dualities that remain unexamined in these teachings. That'd be stuff like "I'm awakened and you're not" or "I'm experiencing True Nature and you're not" or "That wonderful merged feeling I had during satsang was my True Nature, but the ordinary experience of washing the dishes is something else."

I think that's what Greg's post is pointing to here. Say someone gets a special experience in a satsang, but not at other times. That experience is something that comes and goes, so why call something that's coming and going "non-dual"??

That thing we point to with names like "non-dual" or "true nature"... it does not need to be equated with some special experience. It does not need to be thought of as a thing that we can get.

Indeed, anyone getting anything is rendered illusory by its very getting gotten... or something like that.

Q: I have been attending satsangs for years. I’ve gotten very close to enlightenment. In fact a few times the teacher told me I was actually There. But then it seemed to go away. This has happened to lots of others too. Why??

A: Many satsang attendees report this. It seems like this experience came, then went, correct?

Q: Yes!

A: This coming and going is called the “flip-flop.” It’s one of the main dynamics at most satsangs, as well as their main problem. It is the onset of a very transcendent experience, followed by its departure.

Q: Yes, that’s right.

A: Now at satsang, didn’t the teacher tell you that it is not about having an experience?

Q: Yes. They all say that.

A: And yet you are wondering about the onset and disappearance of an experience.

Q: Uh, I guess so. (smiling sheepishly) I think it is because at those times, I am in contact with my true nature.

A: And at other times, you are not, correct?

Q: Yes, that’s right. It is blocked.

A: This is due to some of the satsang teachings themselves. One well known teaching is that at some moments there is a direct, experiential, knowing contact with your nature, while at most other times this knowledge is veiled or confused by story, belief, doubt, fear, anger or scattered-mindedness. According to the “veil” teaching, there are certain moments at satsang where the student has heart-opening, oceanic, loving, emotionally blissful experiences. It is taught that during these moments, the normally occluding veils have dropped away, giving the student a direct experience of their true nature. Sometimes it’s called a “free sample.”

Not all satsangs teach this. It’s less common than it used to be, as some of the teachers seem to have recognized problems with it. But the veil teaching sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Q: Yes, this sounds pretty familiar. And I must say, it sounds pretty good, too. Are you saying that something is wrong with it?

A: It tends to identify the timeless truth of your nature with a coming-and-going experience. And it is based on the false assumption that there are times in which you are not in direct contact with your nature. It creates the expectation that to be enlightened, to be free, one must perpetually have the same blissful, expanded experiences. Because all experiences come and go, this impossible expectation leads to repeated frustration and actually borders on nihilism. The teaching that a veil can come between you and your nature, and that you peek through the veil at those times when you feel open, confuses a particular feeling of openness with the openness from which feelings arise. You are always in direct contact with your nature as awareness. Enlightenment does not reside in a feeling; it is much vaster, sweeter, and more effortless than this. There is deep irony in this. In the satsang teachings, these oceanic states are usually not seen as experiences, since satsang is primarily interested in coarser and more tangible experiences such as emotions. But since they come and go, they are experiences. So when the satsang teaching fails to see these more subtle happenings as experiences, it privileges them by converting them into impossible experiential goals. This makes the goal just another phenomenal experience. A subtle one, but an experience all the same. What the nondual teachings speak about is more subtle and infinitely more pervasive than this.

But Gregji, how are these gurus going to make any money if they don't have their smoke and mirrors to sell?

We haven't read the book, but it gets 4 out of 5 turbans just for that little bit.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Sri Sri Travels With Foot In Mouth

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

Fresh from comparing Mahatma Gandhi to a gun-running movie star in prison, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has gone to West Bengal to stick his nose in the business of Nandigram, where the local government has blessed large petrochemical companies with the right to pollute the local villages. When the villagers tried to keep the marauding chem companies out, a police massacre ensued. Now Sri Sri wants to go "fix" the situation, but he's not sure how welcome he'll be:

[Sri Sri], however, expressed doubt whether the government of the Left-ruled State would take help from a spiritual personality.

That's because it's as clear as the air above Annapurna that Sri Sri's true intention is self-aggrandizement and more fame for his name. Any help the villagers end up with would be strictly a by-product, if in fact it would be any help at all.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Sri Sri Loves Up A Gun-Running "Gandhi"

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar recently made a public relations appearance at the Yerawada jail in India, where Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt is serving a six-year sentence for colluding with terrorist mobsters by storing various heavy weapons for them. Here is Sri Sri's "sage" advice to the incarcerated thespian:

Like Mahatma Gandhi served a sentence in Yerawada Jail, he (Sanjay) too is here for a while. I told him to believe as if he was paying a penance, soon all would be right.

As usual, Sri Sri makes a deft comparison that is anything but. Gandhi was in Yerawada as a result of his leadership role in the non-violent resistance to the British. Sanjay Dutt is there because he was gun-running for murderous terrorist thugs. But that's all the same to Sri Sri, as long as he squeezes out a bit more name and fame for himself.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Enlightennot

Enlightened beings have been very rare, who, upon initiating enlightenment in a seeker, can awaken him in such a way that he immediately experiences the highest state of Self Realization. The spiritual path of Akram Vignan founded by the Gnani Purush ‘Dada Bhagwan’ is a supreme path to the authentic experience of the Soul and Self realization which will lead to your ultimate liberation. Through this extremely powerful ceremony of enlightenment called ‘Gnan Vidhi’ from Deepakbhai, spiritual seekers throughout the world have been awakened and are experiencing the eternal bliss of the Soul in this very life time.

Now that we've been ultimately liberated from last night's dinner, we'll (still) thank Guruphiliac big sister Durga for bringing the pathetic Duh-Duh Bhagwan to our attention.

"What do you mean?" cries the audience. "Hitler wanted an invincible Germany as well!"

"Yes, but unfortunately he didn't succeed!"

"WHAAAAAAAAAT"?!?!?!?!

David Lynch's Berlin visit yesterday was turned into a chaotic fiasco by his friend, "The Raja of Germany" - dressed like a McDonalds Pope - and either a nazi, nutty as squirrel poop - or simply fully unconscious of the words coming out of his little mouth. Since he just kept repeating the same words when asked to clarify, the two latter seem closest to the truth. The crowd started screaming and booing, David Lynch and his American entourage looking dumbstruck...

We can't argue with that analysis. And when you consider the source of the "raja's" appointment, a pathologically grandiose guru who literally believes his organization is going to rule the world, none of it is at all surprising.

But until one of these "Towers of the Maharishi's phallic insecurity Invincibility" actually gets built, we have no reason to believe that the impending Global Country of World Peace is anything more than a sexually frustrated old man's obsessive/compulsive syndrome transmuted into an utterly redundant bureaucracy.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Final Nail In Burning Man's Coffin

File under: Satscams

We hesitate to bring them a portion of what little traffic we see each day, but the fact there was a deeksha camp at this year's Burning Man Festival is all the evidence we need to pronounce it dead, six-feet under and long gone as anything other than the monotonous repetition of aging hipsters' infantile fantasy wish fulfillment:

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

What To Do After A Dead Guru

File under: Backroom Gurudom and Final Satsang

There's a nice article in the Village Voice about the sizable community of devotees that Sri Chinmoy left behind. We were especially entertained by the author's initial experience covering the guru most famous for showing off:

Two decades ago, when I was writing for USA Today, I was dispatched to the Aspiration Ground to watch Chinmoy lift a house. Instead, I saw what looked like a garden shed connected to a calf-raising machine. To add to the domestic aura, there was a flickering television inside, among other items. With his followers gleefully chanting, the guru scrunched his shoulders under the mechanism's padded arms and stood on his toes, tipping the structure slightly.

With the all-powerful guru gone, an ad-hoc committee of senior disciples is going to take over:

"There will not be a successor to Sri Chinmoy," said the spokesperson, "because no one has the same spiritual height, the same realization."

Monday, November 12, 2007

Sri Smile Coming Back To Dazzle Up Some Cash

File under: The Siddhi of PR

Up and coming space-daddy Swami Vishwananada is heading Stateside again in that staple ritual of the big-time guru: the eternal quest for cold, hard American cash. But the Yogananda-incarnation impersonator still has to work on his media manipulation siddhi, issuing a mere wire-service press release rather than conning some journalist into providing an article conveying that magical combination of humanity and mysterious power that losersdevotees all over the world believe their gurus to possess.

But they sure haven't given up on the fund-raising. Get a load of this transparent pitch:

Sri Swami Vishwananda comes to remind us of love and His message is simple, “God is Love inside each one of us.” When we receive His blessing, it is in the form of love. He tells us “that the only traveling we need to do is from the mind to the heart” and “that in the silence, we can find our true Selves.” And He reminds us that just as we have been given this love freely, we should share and spread this love and joy unconditionally with everyone.

He's talking about green love, folks, for in the next paragraph we read:

By supporting The Bhakti Maraga Foundation you can make it possible for many more people to realize this love in their own lives. It is one of many ways to express our gratitude and of giving back some of what we have received.

Sadly, we don't see much of a future for Swami Vishwananda if he doesn't step up the miracle-mongering. Folks can get the same, lame platitudes about love and oneness from just about any yoga teacher on the block. People in the States go to gurus for the spectacular divine fireworks they imagine they're gonna get. Nithyananda has got miracles coming out of his ass right now, and famous followers to boot.

So Vishy better step up and start being as ridiculous as the rest of them if he's to get any real traction over here.

Friday, November 09, 2007

The Kracki's Stateside 'Ho

File under: Satscams

When we saw the list of registered deeksha pushers "oneness" facilitators participating in the Kracki's efforts to stunt all spiritual development in the world, we hesitated a sec before bringing our light to bear there again. It's been quite a while since that jolly old piggy Kalki Bhagavan has made a appearance on these pages, and now that he's got an army of hoppers slanging his product, the stakes are trending up.

But today we're going to talk more about his Stateside 'ho.

Now, we're not unaware that Sri Ranji might be an absolutely adorable person, someone we might find funny, charming, intelligent and in possession of insight; so when we call her a 'ho, we're only extending the "Kracki" metaphor. If he's the king pin pimp drug dealer, Sri Ranji is his number one bitch in the States.

The outrage our little simile may provoke is a test for Ranji, and all the other poor souls trapped in a notion of enlightenment that is like 10 coats of blackout paint on the window to your soul. The whole basis of the "Oneness Movement" is rooted in Vedanta. And the one thing Vedanta tells us above all other things is that you are always oneness absolute, whether you believe it or not, or whether you are aware of it or not. Essentially, the truth of Vedanta renders any "oneness blessing" to be at the very best, only a ritual acknowledgement of a truth that has never not been. We're all always oneness, all the time, folks. Just because you don't "feel" it doesn't mean it's not so, and if you do think you can feel it, please accept the fact that you are feeling nothing more than the mental effects of an idea your mind has been polluted with.

What Sri Ranji is providing is the worst spiritual poison. What they call "oneness" we know to be nonsense. The truth of the Atman cannot be given, simply because it has never not been our gift. All you get from that vileness called the "oneness blessing" is the idea that you got something. They're selling nothing but hot air, and now millions are going gaga over their own self-generated spiritual delusion, the very crack that the Kracki defiles the world with.

So, based on that view, we feel perfectly justified in calling Sri Ranji a 'ho, the Kracki a pig, his wife Amma a cow, and all those who believe he is God, tragically deluded.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Guru Of Darkness

File under: Backroom Gurudom and Gurubusting

Hitler was his hero and his cult is thriving in Bharat. Meet the guru of India's version of the Ku Klux Klan:

[The RSS] became a mass organisation under the leadership of M.S Golwalker. M.S Golwalker is seen as the spiritual master of this organisation and is referred to as Guru, he is worshipped and presumed as a god. Golwalker was a sympathiser of Hitler and said that Hindus can learn a lesson from Hitler and his pure race ideology. In support of this Golwalker said violence should be used a surgeon’s knife to kill society. Even he goes on to say that the one who do not accept Hindutva as the main religion and culture of India is merely a disease which need treatment. To kill them is merely like using medicine to cure a disease. Now we are talking about a person who thinks that humans with different beliefs should be wiped out, he takes this logic directly from Hitler.

No wonder Narendra Modi was able to get away with genocide in the Indian state of Gujurat while its Prime Minister.

Pay attention, devotees: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ammachi, Swami Ramdev and many other Hindu religious leaders all get support from the RSS, albeit not always openly. It's like Pat Robertson getting caught at a cross-burning in the States. These are the people some of you believe to be God. Often, it turns out, many who follow them may find you to be little more than vermin to be exterminated.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Fire That Guru!

So we don’t really lose our “Buddha nature” because of what we don’t know, but because of what we are convinced we know because others have told us so—by clinging to borrowed, unshakable “truths.” As soon as we establish something as fact or pass judgment on it (“This is the way it is”), we lose contact with reality, with the greater whole. We reduce the truth—inasmuch as it exists—to a word, a document or a method and close ourselves to learning and growing.

We like to call these occluding ideas about self-realization, our numero uno bugaboo and the primary reason all these hapless devotees will never come to their own self-realization in this life. It's all because they've stuffed their heads full of the bullshit their guru is using as a ladder to climb up on that pedestal in their mind. It destroys the whole reason they're supposed to have a guru in the first place, but unfortunately, it's also a really good business practice for someone counting on being God in the eyes of a paying client.

Please read the whole article. It reminds us a bit of the pieceGp friend Doug Rushkoff wrote a few years back, but one that delves a bit further into the socio-cultural implications (and the unavoidable, inherent problems) of gurudom in the West.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Coming Down Off A Gurumayi High

And then, like every conversation with every devotee I've had in twenty years, the topic turned to Gurumayi. With a few words and gestures of resignation we shared our belief that she is not coming back. Or at least, the yoga that we had practiced so lovingly for so long would not return in its old form. Then "C" said something that astounded me; she confessed that this was not a surprise to her because of a letter she received from Gurumayi years ago. What could Gurumayi have communicated to a devotee in writing that would presage her own disappearance? She explained; it was a letter in which Gurumayi declined her request for an extended stay at the ashram, saying that "C's" light was needed out in the world. Suddenly, the bridge to the past we were standing on crumbled down the middle and an abyss opened up between us. Or, so I felt.

Undoubtedly I was projecting, but it seemed to me that "C" had accomplished a set of mental gymnastics that used to be as natural to me as yogic breathing, but that I no longer knew how to perform. She had taken a glaringly inconvenient fact about SY (the Guru had disappeared) and reconciled it in her mind by appending it to another experience that confirmed, explained or even mystically predicted it (Gurumayi told her that our light is needed not at the ashram, but out in the world.)

I didn't judge my friend: I envied her.

Sounds like someone still carries a torch for the enchanting but gone-missing guru-ess of Siddha Yoga. We don't blame him. However, the insidious ideological mindwarp that allows a devotee to draw such a delusional conclusion is nothing to covet. Gurumayi probably declined this person's request because she didn't measure up in some way, or perhaps wasn't needed. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not something you tell a paying devotee, hence the nice little "light" simile to ensure another head to count at the next intensive. And the next, and next...

The Real Sri Sri

Get to know SSRS a bit better and you might not respect him so much. If only the bulk of his Indian following knew! Chuck gives a very accurate description of the AOL course, from his own perspective, of course. Why should anyone feel that Ravi Shankar is superior to them? Because you do? He started off as a sincere man with some knowledge, quite a lot of it, in fact, some compassion, good intentions, and got, imo, overwhelmed by the money, the name and fame. He changed very quickly as he because famous. If you didn't know him in 1990, then you cannot possibly know that fact about him. The man is a fallen yogi. That's about it. I feel sorry for him and all his devotees. They will get lead nowhere by him.

The great Tiruchi Swamigal (now in Maha Samadhi) was someone whom Ravi Shankar went to for advice and help. He felt that Swamiji was superior to him, evidently. I was once present when Swamiji counseled a distraught young man who had been threatened by Ravi Shankar (that he would be destroyed if he left him without permission). The man said that he had been told by SSRS "you will never be happy in this life if you leave me. I will destroy you...." Sickening, really. Then Tiruchi Swamigal replied, laughing: "It would have been better of Ravi Shankar would have gotten married, I think. Why should you be destroyed or unhappy if he says so? So many people never heard of him, and they live perfectly happy lives! You have followed a blind man and you yourself are blind. Now, you have ended up in a pit as a result. It's good you have left. Go and tell everyone what you know about him. Write a book about it. It will do him some good, maybe". Then he laughed a lot. If you knew Tiruchi Swamigal, then you know that it's rare for him to have someone sitting for long in front of him. So I was indeed fortunate to be a "fly on the wall" as this conversation took place that day. And so I felt good that I had already made the decision not to follow SSRS any more, knowing how corrupted he had become, and how corrupt the entire organization was.

There are a number of these sort of accounts peppering the comments sections of this blog. You've got to dig for them a bit, but these are all the evidence we need to proclaim Sri Sri the most fame-lusting fauxru to hit the scene since his former mentor the Maharishi decided he was going to take over the world.

Amma Satire Sets Hindu Bees Buzzing

We take this opportunity to request all Hindu brothers who have legal background to file a case against Kairali for misusing AMMA's bhajan CD without consent as per the copyright act and demand strong punishment against Marxist media thugs for hurting millions of Amma’s followers.

In a country where the innocent are persecuted, and the guilty are sheltered, the controversial Dera Sacha Sauda chief finally took a breath of relief as he was granted regular bail by a special CBI Court in Ambala this past week for his involvement in three highly publicized criminal cases. The lecherous saadh is undergoing a trial in two cases of murder and in one case of raping a saadhvi. The bail grant was criticized by Sikh organizations who blamed the Centre and the Indian Judiciary of shielding the rich and filthy with impunity.

Obviously, this was written by the employees of the Punjabi Railroad Express, who are providing the rails and locomotive to run the Baba right into a life sentence, trumped up charges aside, for little more than dressing up as a revered Sikh patriarch.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Sri Sri's Good Deeds To Help You Forget Modi

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar blew his own hornhard with the publication of this Art of Living press release:

The farmers, who have successfully come out of depression and suicidal tendencies they thanks to the comprehensive programme launched by the Art of Living, interacted with Sri Sri and expressed their gratitude for giving them a new leash of life. Sri Sri also offered solace to several widows whose husbands have committed suicides.

It's a miracle Sri Sri's brains didn't end up on the wall with that thing.

We can see why he took the risk, for it serves to distract from that ugly Gujurat "thing" and Sri Sri's show of support for those who fomented mass religious violence. Sri Sri has got to put down some "do-gooding" miles to get past that painfully-mistaken endorsement, something that was probably nothing more than the multi-faced glad-hander covering all his bases.

He may not have done the right thing, but he did the smart thing... for Sri Sri, as always.

.... An appropriate name for your blog could have been Neti Neti.— Rama

While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they
are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim
is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively
self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that
no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus
poop on the same pot we do.